The car wound its way down a Massachusetts back road that looked very much like the farm roads of New Hampshire. Rolling fields give way to rock walls, where for years farmers have piled the stones that grew in the fields they cultivated.

We’re visiting an “organic” farm called Seeds of Solidarity, which hosts a huge garlic festival in the fall (they were preaching organic before the usda took the term). The farm is not USDA certified because the certification is too expensive, and with their limited means, Seeds of Solidarity would rather put those funds to better use. Deb Habib, who runs the farm’s nonprofit, greets us as we pull up. She facilitates the building of greenhouses and other agricultural related education projects in schools in the area .

The Garlic pokes lances up from a cardboard bed in the fields that surround the parking area. It was covered by mulch but rain and wind have created a few bald spots. They use the cardboard to keep the weeds down and to add organic matter to the soil. The Garlic looks evenly spaced and exceptionally neat,better then most garlic fields I have seen. At the end of each group of garlic is a stake with the variety’s name on it–they grow sixteen types of garlic here, and each one has a unique flavor.

Surrounding the cardboard and garlic fields are relatively young trees; only a few look older than thirty years of age. This is a first generation successional forest. It is mostly hardwoods, maples, oaks, and beeches, with a few hemlocks and pines fighting to make their way up to the light.

Next to the immaculate, almost maintenance-free garlic fields, the rest of the farm looks a little ragged, grasses have overgrown some of the paths and the bones of forgotten projects lie weathered and forgotten for the moment. Since there is limited labor available so early in the growing season, the non-dire tasks give precedence to those tasks essential to the running of the farm. I it looks like mist farms do at this point in the year

<

The main house is in a clearing with 4 large winter greens producing greenhouses run by Ricky Baruc, the farm manager–most of the farm’s profits result from these greenhouses and the autumnal garlic festival. The exterior of the house is well done cob/earthen plaster, and as you enter the house, its uniqueness is immediately apparent. It looks like it came straight from Morocco with its arched doorways, sculpted illumination sconces and fine finish work, all topped off with an earthen-red floor of some material that I cannot quite place, though it kind of looks like soft, dyed concrete.

This house and the rest of the farm are all powered by banks of solar cells positioned to capture the best quantity of light.The whole farm feels brand new and yet well organized–there are many projects that await only the human power needed to complete them. Eventually, all the work will get done.